1. Honesty

If you are honest when helping a friend you will create a save space for them to be open up and trust that your advice will be true.

Almost any difficulty will move in the face of honesty. When I am honest I never feel stupid. And when I am honest I am automatically humble. Hugh Prather

Kings take pleasure in honest lips; they value a man who speaks the truth. Proverbs 16,13

A key word is confrontation!Don’t try to win them, by deceiving honesty. Honesty means: “I love you so much, I will confront you with the truth.” Even if you are not 100% sure. It’s not a crime to change your mind – as long as you are honest about it.

I grew up with some handicaps. My teachers wrote” ND has big problems with reading and writing”, they said I was a dyslexic.
I believed them. My grades where bad. Than became worse.

No wonder.
My self-esteem was below zero. I didn’t talk much, because of my insecurity I started to stutter.

I was blocked

Stories always fascinated me. I would think up grand adventures, but I was afraid to write them down.
I couldn’t spell.

Fresh start

At the age of 12 I moved with my family from Switzerland to the USA. Everything was in English now. At first it brought fear to my spelling ability, but I realized that it was a chance to start fresh. No teacher knew that I was a dyslexic. As I learned a new language my stuttering started to disappear. My self-esteem started to grow.

Accepted

When I returned to Switzerland at the age of 15 I had to learn German again. Still afraid of making mistakes I did my minimal and started to use my mouth over writing for communication. I had accepted that I couldn’t write, so I would become a speaker. Working as a salesman and a youth pastor was great. Speaking was my greatest tool. I didn’t have to write a lot, or let someone else do it for me. I had accepted the inability to write.

Overcome

At the age of 36 my life took another turn. My job changed from being a youth pastor to a coach and leader developer. Communication didn’t change right away. I still spoke a lot. More and more people told me, that what I said would be great in writing.

We can often live for years with the chronic pain of our lack of vision, leadership or management in our personal lives. We feel uneasy and uncomfortable and occasionally take steps to ease the pain, at least for a time. Because the pain is chronic, we get used to it, we learn to live with it.

But when we have problems in our interactions with other people, we’re very aware of acute pain—its often intense, and we want it to go away.
That’s when we try to treat the symptoms with quick fixes and techniques ~ the band-aid approach.

The roots
We don’t understand that the acute pain is an outgrowth of the deeper, chronic problem. And until we stop treating the symptoms and start treating the problem, our efforts will only bring counterproductive results. We will only be successful at obscuring the chronic pain even more.

The place to begin building any relationship is inside ourselves, inside our circle of Influence, our, own character. Steven Covey

Two of our most proven people will leave ICF Zurich this summer 2013 with their whole family. ND & Sophal Strupler will plant a new ICF church in Cambodia. They are ready for a really big adventure.
We (ICF Zurich) asked how all this happened and what they feel personally.

Interview with ND Strupler

How on earth did it come about that you decided to move to Cambodia with your family? Your wife Sophal is an adoptive child from Cambodia…

This has to do with our first decision we took over 20 years ago: We where part in the ICF project and are prepared to go “all in”. Now it’s the same just with another challenge. It is a consequence of our first decision wanting to have an excited life in the kingdom of God. Sophal was the one who took the initiative to plant an ICF in Cambodia. It wouldn’t have been my choice, I would have picked California (another place with “C”…). But when she vocalized this, I also realized that like a puzzle many pieces fit together and it really made sense.

Where in Cambodia will you start and why?

After a time of research we chose the city of Siem Reap. At the moment, this is the fastest growing city in Cambodia because it is a tourist spot which attracts many Cambodians from the surrounding provinces. Unfortunately, it’s not near to the sea but one flying hour from Siem Reap.

What is your and your family’s motivation to take such a step after such a long time of active church work in ICF Zurich? You are not 20 any more…